VVVVVV

Naya’s Quest, the latest from VVVVVV and Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh, is an incredibly stressful game. You know that whole relationship you have with your eyes where they by and large tell you the visual truth of a situation? That thing your entire basis of reality is more or less founded upon? Yeah, well, forget about that. You play as a girl (presumably named Naya, unless even that part is an insidious trap door of a lie) who seeks “the edge” in a world that’s falling to pieces. So you hop between squares and everything is just dandy until – if you’re anything like me – you fall right through the ground. Or so you think. But actually, the isometric viewpoint just made it look> like a square was right in front of you. In reality it was above you or on the other side of the level or in outer space. And that is when the (exceedingly nauseating, nerve-wracking) learning begins. It’s occasionally frustrating, but also frequently brilliant.

The ever-reliable Indiegames.com notices that Increpare, the devilish mind behind English Country Tune and other mind-twisters, has released MMMMMM, a free spike-laden tribute/alternate take/sequel to Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV. It’s a puzzle game about trinket collection and spike avoidance, with success being reliant on forward thinking and, of course, gravity manipulation. I was playing for about thirty seconds before diagonal surfaces were introduced and after five minutes I’d become intimate with more spikes than there are atoms in the universe. Sometimes the rules of a game create a sort of synthesis with my mental workings; in this case the two were at war and I was caught in the middle, hoist by Increpare’s pixel petard. Everyone go and beat it then tell me how rubbish I am.

Good news and less good news from the Humble Bundle camp today. The happier end of the bargain is that purchasers of the current Humble Bundle 4 now get the base contents of Humble Bundle 3 (i.e. VVVVVV, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, And Yet It Moves, and Hammerfight) added to their pack. That’s if they’ve bought HB4 already. If they haven’t, they’ll have to beat the average price to get the bonus goodies. The average price is currently $5.17 million. (more…)

A right pair, Jim and I. Entirely inappropriate, surely, to tackle a co-operative puzzle and exploration game together. We did it, though. We conquered At A Distance‘s abstract shape-worlds, and we did it together. And creator Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV) only had to give us big, fat hints around half a dozen times. Perhaps he was inwardly thinking “these feckless jokers run a website about videogames?”, but outwardly he was patient and understanding, so I’ll presume we weren’t quite the most pathetic pair he saw tackle his brain-teasing wonder.

Right: here’s the main problem with writing about At A Distance. You say how it works, you spoil it. I’m going to take a cowardly middle-ground and obliquely reference key elements without actually shining a direct light on them (and certainly not on how to solve the game), but if you want to go in totally blind to this 30 minute-long co-op indie game that requires two adjacent PCs to play it, stop reading now. (more…)

Here’s an indie bundle with a difference – it doesn’t contain any games. Instead, the Indie Music Bundle it’s a collection of soundtracks from some of your favourite (assumption #1) indie games and some you have probably never heard of (assumption #2). As is swiftly becoming obligatory, the ten albums are available at a price of your choosing, although this is for one day only, being a Black Friday sale. The minimum price is $1 and if you pay at least $10 you’ll receive seven bonus items.

Of the ones that I know, the VVVVVV soundtrack is simply wonderful, and both Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, are quite enjoyable. The latter is in the $10 bonus items. Even if you opt to be stingy, for a dollar you’re sure to find something that you love (assumption #3). Everything is DRM-free and delivered as 320kbps MP3s. Take a look.

We all loved Terry Cavanagh’s wonderful VVVVVV last year, didn’t we? Well I certainly did, that Kieron bloke did, and a straw poll of my hands unanimously voted in favour it. Universal approval if ever I saw it. Fantastic news: Terry has joined up with programmer Simon Roth to push out a major update to VVVVVV. Here’s the what’s new in VVVVVVersion 2.0: (more…)

First there was a Humble Indie Bundle. Then there was another Humble Indie Bundle. And now, there is a third Humble Indie Bundle! So it goes.>

Yes, the pay-what-you-want pack that has brought welcome funds to indie devs and philanthropic organisations alike (not to mention giving gamers a fat pack of splendid indie games for bargain prices) has returned for a new Summer of fun. But which splendid indie games are in it, exactly? I’m glad you asked.

VVVVVV, last year’s absolutely stellar indie platformer, had some similarly brilliant music. Take a listen to this. Complex, organic, emotive- if that’s not perfection in a pseudo chiptune, I don’t know what is. The artist behind those tracks, Magnus Pålsson (aka Souleye), released them last year in an album called PPPPPP.

What this> post is about is that Pålsson’s just released PPPPPPowerup!, an album made up of VVVVVV tracks (and some extras) arranged by eighteen different musicians (including Super Meat Boy composer Danny Baranowsky). “Arranged” is musician for “using real instruments, for instance a guitar or a bassoon or something”. PPPPPPowerup! will set you back $10 (plus shipping if you want a physical copy), and you can listen to a teaser below. All this comes courtesy of the Indiegames blog, who have a fat interview with Souleye here.(more…)

Remember VVVVVV, the brutal & brilliant gravity-flipping platformer from early in the year? Ah, you do. Here‘s what Kieron had to say about it, and here‘s my take. Have you tried the demo? There’s a demo, you know.

More excitingly, as of last week there’s also a demo of the C64 demake. As in, converting the game so it will run on a C64. Why? Because, that’s why. Grab yourself an emulator and get the whopping 16kb ROM here. And for a reminder of why Kieron expects somebody to punch the VVVVVV creator in the face one day, watch the video after the jump. (more…)